City dwellers are bombarded each day with the demands of advertisers, government, media and other groups that dominate communication, and their own voices can be lost in the din. Signs, images and symbols confront us on every possible surface with messages that tell us what to do and how to think. YOUR TEXT HERE, an installation by artist Marcos Zotes, flips that dynamic, displaying the words of citizens in bold type on the sides of buildings.
YOUR TEXT HERE is an urban light art installation that projects short messages from participants onto buildings, allowing them to broadcast their thoughts and feelings back to the city. Users enter their messages through a website on their mobile phones, enabling their voices to be heard while remaining anonymous.
More than 1,000 anonymous messages were projected for 10 to 20 seconds each during DLECTRICITY, an outdoors light art festival that took place in midtown Detroit in October 2012.
While this particular project was approved by local officials, ‘projection bombing‘ is often done guerrilla-style. Because it’s temporary and the source of the light can be hard to pinpoint, it offers a relatively easy way to get messages across to a large number of people without fear of getting in trouble with the authorities. This technique was used by activist Mike Read during the peak of Occupy Wall Street to display messages like “Look around, you are a part of a global uprising.”
